105 comments:

Happens all the time with Muslims. When driving a taxi they'll refuse to pick up people at bars, or people with dogs. At meat processing plants they'll refuse to handle pork. And claim discrimnation for it, and the feds will step in and squash the company cause, you know its HARD to be a Muslim in America with all the hatred.

"If someone has a wing wong then they are a man. No matter what they might want to believe."

Maybe, but if Macy's wants to open the women's dressing rooms to men who choose to think of themselves as women, it's not the place of a Macy's employee to hassle the customers and deprive them of the access Macy's has offered them.

It's like a vegetarian working at McDonald's and refusing to serve hamburgers.

If Macy's wants to open the women's dressing rooms to men, then they deserve to get sued. If I send my teenage daughter into a WOMEN'S dressing room, I expect that there won't be any men there, and she expects there won't be any men there. Which means she's more likely to inadvertently expose herself to this man.

I'm going to be contacting Macy's telling them to terminate my credit account with them, because if they let men into the women's dressing room, I'm not shopping there any more.

In most stores I have bought clothes in, the dressing rooms were private cubicles, undifferentiated by sex. Even if I was in one cubicle and a woman was in the next, neither of could inadvertently be exposed to the other, as long as we kept the door or curtain closed.

Is Macy's that far behind Wal Mart that they have communal changing rooms?

If this is Macy's policy I'm no longer shopping there. I don't want to try on clothes in dressing rooms where men are allowed. What's to stop a creep from posing as a cross-dresser just to gain access to a place where women take their clothes off? If Macy's believes it's important to cater to such a tiny percentage of the population maybe it should provide special transgender dressing rooms.

Women's restrooms are a series of private cubes, should men therefore be free to walk into them whenever they want?

If you call something a "Women's Dressing Room" you create the expectation that only Women will be in there. Which creates a different atmosphere than a All Sexes Dressing Room (for example, it affects whether or not you might step out of the cubical less than fully clothed, in order to show off the clothing you're looking at to your female friend.

"Women's Dressing Room" creates an implicit promise that men will be kept out. The customer wanted to violate that promise, good for Natalie Johnson for not letting him do that.

VERY bad for Macy's to punish Natalie Johnson for protecting the female customers.

You people are making ridiculous, unwarranted assumptions. It's very likely that Macy's does not have communal dressing rooms. They are almost certainly single little rooms with doors or curtains you draw across. For some reason, Macy's has some dressings rooms segregated by gender.

People change in unisex dressing rooms all the time. Everyone, including the bitchers here. Get over yourselves. Nobody is seeing anybody's else's business.

Often @ convenience store on the highway there is a line @ the single toilet women restrooms and the mens is empty. I will tell women I'll watch the door and let women use "our"[I'm a man] restroom. Being an observor of human behavior, I notice the down to earth, blue collar women have no problem and are thankful. The more prissy, "professional" women usually look puzzled and choose to squirm. People who think they're "better" just can't think outside the box, even if it means peeing their pants. They need to preserve the order of things

One of the improvements in new stadiums is more equity in restrooms. Just like here in this blog. There's a restroom we can all use. It's co-ed.

Nobody needs to get sued for anything. Maybe Macy's (or a tea-partier, or one of the Occupy Whatever crowd) needs to put up a big sign at the entrance: The guy, gal or martian green person in the changing room next to you may not be what you think it-he-she-they is/are. We don't care. If you do, go somewhere else.

Working in London in the late nineties, I knew a guy whose girlfriend owned a wedding shop. She had so many men coming in to buy wedding gowns (for themselves) that she made Wednesday nights "Male Only". It turned out to be a profitable decision -- and her customers were quite grateful for it. Some 12 years on, though, I suspect the new culture of TV's, CD's and TG's would find offense in the reference to males.

I for one would NOT feel comfortable with a man in the women's dressing room, even if he claimed to be transgendered.

When I was younger I was part of the art/music crowd at the university and I knew a LOT of men who considered themselves 'transgendered' or crossdressing, or a 'woman in a man's body'. Most they used that term for nefarious ends.

End point is, they are still biologically a man, they still have a penis they refuse to give up (god forbid they would have surgery to do a full transformation, cutting off their penis to truly become a 'woman' was unthinkable).

If the customer was a true transgender - meaning born with both female and male parts but looks male, that is one thing. If the person is 100% a male genetically and crossdresses - they are not transgendered. In fact, they are giving the transgendered community a bad name.

This was handled very poorly by Macy's. The publicity may cause some women to shop elsewhere or alternatively they may buy, take the garment home to try on, and return the garment to the store when it does not fit. Women shopping elsewhere is bad enough, but I imagine that the costs to Macy's of the latter are pretty serious. Doubly so since it may be difficult to tell whether the garment was merely tried on or worn for one event and had a couple tags reattached.

I think it's standard practice for the cops to put the tv's in the holding cells with the women. Should Macy's be more discriminatory than the cops?.....This is probably a one off,so to speak. If the woman showed bad judgement, the guy who fired her showed truly terrible judgement. I don't see how this pubicity helps Macy's. Best just to muddle through and not allow either the employee or the tv to claim martyr status....I'm not sure, but I think guys would be more offended than women at having a tv in their changing room. Tvs probably come in hard to fit sizes and would be better served by shopping at Amazon. This is probably a subtle ploy by Althouse to attract their attention and to get their business.

"ut if Macy's wants to open the women's dressing rooms to men who choose to think of themselves as women, it's not the place of a Macy's employee to hassle the customers "

how about Macy's just abandoning the concept of gender specific dressing rooms and have an open area where all can change try on the clothes regardless of what they think they are.

and I don't think it is like a vegetarian working at a hamburger joint. when the woman was hired did Macy's provide her with information that said transgender individuals are allowed to use any changing room? are all customers aware of this policy? or just the transgendered customers?

I have a dear old friend who has recently decided to identify as female.

I hear him (yes, his dna is male and he still has a pecker) rave that the Salvation Army shelters should let him stay in the women's dorm. Or that the camp ground showers should let him use the women's showers.

And I sympathize. But then I think, would I want my daughter to have to share the dorm with a person who is obviously male despite this persons "identifying"?

No. Absolutely not. He can say he's Teddy Roosevelt or Jesus Christ. It doesn't change the fact that his DNA and pecker make him a man.

And, although my heart goes out to the bad joke his mind and body are playing on him that is no reason why a woman or girl should accept men in the restroom, dorm room or dressing room.

Honestly, even after my friend loses the equipment (assuming he does) he will still look male and his DNA will confirm him male.

Well, given GM's abysmal performance with the Volt...you know...with the impending recall due to horrid, writhing, burnt-toast death at the hands of their poorly designed batteries, perhaps Ombama Inc will acquire a majority share in Macy's next and bring their down-home, campy cronyism to that retailer. That'd cook her little righteous goose, wouldn't it?

How far we've come. Not long ago this guy would have been arrested and the employee been given a medal for alertness. It was better then. Side message to Ann, I'll meet you in the women's restroom tomorrow. I'll be the lady with the beard and the beer gut.

I worked in a very high-end department of a store since bought by Macy's while I was in grad school almost 20 years ago. We had one customer (that we knew of) who was transgender. We were very discrete with this person and made sure that no one else was in that particular section of the dressing rooms when she was there.

I remember just feeling really bad for that person, how hard it would have been to decide that about yourself. We would do our level best to make her comfortable and find her some nice outfits. I'm not sure it is so hard to make that decision now. I know that it is much more "out" than it used to be.

There is a distinction between mixed use changing rooms and women's changing rooms.

If I am in a store that has mixed use changing rooms, I am much more circumspect about opening the door. I don't let the stall to check the three way mirrors and I don't generally get hte same kind of assistance from sales clerks as far as bringing different sizes or colors or their opinions.

On the other hands, in a WOMAN'S changing room, I frequently have to open the door partially undressed to get new items of clothing. When shopping for bras, the sales clerks often assist in making adjustments and checking fit which requires an open door.

I have very different expectations for these very different situations.

Orthography is not optional, ESPECIALLY in the internet age, when so much communication is written instead of spoken. Unintentional spelling errors are acceptable.

It seems like many people think coming up with new spellings and abbreviations is somehow clever, new, and original. Go back about 100 years and look at Morse code abbreviations that were used in telegraphy to make messages shorter.

Also, you now know not to make those assumptions at Macy's, if you choose to shop there. But there's nothing here to get crazy about. In the worst possible case, some tranny briefly sees your tits. Even if you've got the most perfectly bouncy tits in the world with the most perfectly puffy nipples, the world will still continue to turn. Promise.

Further, the issue here is not how you feel about the policy -- no matter how mortified you clearly are -- but whether this person should be able to get her job back based, presumably, on a claim of religious discrimination.

Furthermore, don't you think that the either you'd see the dude in the women's dressing room area, or the salespeople would be kind enough to alert you that there is a tranny lurking about? Isn't that about as likely as a dude going to the women's dressing room and accidentally seeing you in your underwear for a fleeting second?

I worked at Macy's over Christmas several years ago. For $9 an hour, I was not going to fight with customers. If a man had insisted on going into the women's dressing room (and at the time, I was unaware that Macy's had this policy), I would have said something to him one time, then shrugged. Maybe called security. But there is nothing like working retail to discover that the best way to handle most customers is just to say politely, "Yes ma'am" or "no ma'am" to anything they might say. You have nothing to gain by arguing.

A women's dressing room is a communal environment, as is a restroom, even tho there are separate cubicles with doors or curtains for each individual to use. A woman (born female) is far more likely to ask for help or an opinion from another woman in that environment than it would seem men do in their respective dressing rooms/restrooms. They bring with them their children expecting that no men (of any sexual orientation) are there to present any threat, even tho they will keep an eye out for how the other women might behave. They ask for and receive help for situations that arise regarding their clothing, their menfolk or their periods (being a woman, as opposed to just thinking one is a woman), and are in no way interested in anything a cross dresser or transgendered person has to contribute to that situation.

Women grow up coping with all the stress and circumstances that come with being female, and those environments are the two "public" places to whence a woman can retreat, dress and redress, and expect safety and privacy from male eyes and male expectations.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be the Princess of Wales. Even when Diana came along, I thought that must be wonderful. To this day, I don't have a clue what marrying an English prince really means. It may be right and good that our society allows men to wear clothes of their choosing and get plastic surgery to match, but who we are is what fortune has made of us. I may buy a tiara and you (men) may wear a dress, but you don't have to curtsy to me and stay out of the ladies dressing room.

Look, if as a society we're going to honor transexuals, we at least should be able to set some kind of ontological bar.

If you're a post-op, fully "reassigned" transexual, use the rooms for your new gender.

But when we're down to a world of college student activists cutting their hair rockabilly style and wearing tucked-in shirts and calling themselves a "man", or whatever the aspirational mtf equivalent would be (hell, when I used to read Deconstructionism I painted my nails and wore jelly platforms to a family reunion, which counts in my view as more of an effort than Chaz Bono makes), then we're just valorizing the idea that gender is absolutely as malleable as it would be in a production of "Twelfth Night." A mere theatre convention, in a word.

When women go to try on their damn clothes in the shopping mall, they don't want to be badgered by Michael Caine living out his whims.

Sweetbriar -- Apparently, it is the policy of Macy's that you will have exactly none of your demands met at Macy's. Moreover, as Synova suggests, this is going to be a very common occurrence at other stores as well.

Perhaps you could open a store catering to women with similarly tender sensibilities as your own. Instead of, you know, moaning.

If Macy's tells us that the changing rooms are communal that's one thing. The rooms are still called "womens" changing rooms. I don't want someone who thinks he is a woman in the changing area with me or my daughters or grand daughters. They are mentally ill and should not be treated as anything else. If someone thinks they are a horse they are taken to a hospital. If a man thinks he is a woman or a woman thinks she is a man we are supposed to be supportive of their feelings. --ll--it.

It's Macy's store but it's against the law to discriminate in employment decisions on the basis of the employee's religion. Of course, a libertarian would say the owner should be able to do as they please with their store. This argument lost in 1964 with the Civil Rights Acts.

Basil -- You are assuming quite a lot. I won't take the time to educate you about your assumptions, and why they are ridiculously poor. Suffice it to say, if you knew all the things you don't know, you'd feel pretty foolish about what you just published to the world.

Macy's has a rule. This young woman broke that rule. Their rule takes precedent over her religious beliefs in this case.

Some are making an assumption that the transgender guy will sneak a peak at women undressing. Wouldn't you then also fear a lesbian doing the same thing? And since most dressing rooms are closed off and separated from each other it would take some effort.

If people are so concerned then why not just buy the clothes, try them at home and return or exchange them later.

Matt -- Agreed. Something we can wholeheartedly agree on. The strange people are really coming out on this one. The charge that people with sexual identity issues are mentally ill is just absurd and says many sad things about the person who made the charge.

If you want to have some real fun, though, read the comments at the article.

This is a case of not enough information. Was this an individual who was attempting to be discreet and was dressed and groomed like a woman, or was this some kid in sweats with long hair? (If the kid was ambiguously dressed, all the arguments about a women's dressing room being a series of private rooms work both ways -- there's no apparent harm in going to the men's changing room, except perhaps a longer walk. If the kid was dressed all girly, then it would have been inappropriate to expect the person to use the men's changing room.) Did she work in the intimates department, where there could be a bra-fitter at work, or just in "regular" women's clothes?

Assuming that only upon close inspection was it clear that this was a man, then the woman was out-of-bounds in chasing him away from the changing room. This isn't like a Muslim refusing to ring up alcohol at the cash register, where there are accomodations like a nearby cashier scanning the bottle of wine (as happens with underage cashiers anyway), this would be more like a Muslim arguing with a customer who wanted to buy a bottle of wine.

I suspect it's not as straightforward as that. It says she spotted the teen "in" the dressing area, which means that it wasn't simply a set of private cubicles. The teen was there with friends who joined the arguement (presumably these were "real" girls) which likewise seems to suggest that there was a significant open area where they were looking at the clothes together, and which means there would have very noticably been a male voice in the changing room, which would have drawn attention to them.

Consider the case of Larry Wachowski. Liberals will say, with perfect seriousness, that Larry Wachowski is now Lana Wachowski, and we should all think of him as a woman.

But he's not a woman. He's a man who's self-hatred got so out of hand that he cut his penis off.

We are biological animals. We are in nature, and we reproduce like animals. This is normal human sexuality.

Wachowski had surgery, but he's not a woman now. He doesn't have a uterus. He can't get pregnant. Nor can he make s woman pregnant now. He went into the surgery a normal man, and came out a freak.

And it's not a temporary freak, like wearing a dress or role-playing or having a sex fantasy. It's a permanent scarring of his body.

His penis has been cut off.

It's not normal behavior to cut your penis off. If Larry Wachowski did this to himself in a kitchen with a steak knife, we would hospitalize him. But since he paid money to a surgeon to do it to him, we say he's okay.

Not okay! You want to cut off your penis? You have mental health issues. It's really kind of awful that we have so-called doctors who do this kind of Frankenstein surgery, when really what the patient needs is mental health counseling, and a lot of it.

The charge that people with sexual identity issues are mentally ill is just absurd and says many sad things about the person who made the charge.

Oh yeah, cause mental illness has nothing to do with sex, or mommy, or daddy. I can tell you studied Freud.

Of course liberals dismiss Freud. But that's political ideology based on a theory that sex is constructed by society. Freud had this odd idea that people have sex and reproduce. You know, truth. And he made some psychological observations based on this biological truth. Freud may be right or wrong on any particular point. But to insist that there is no such thing as normal sexuality is to put your head up your ass.

Which, by the way, is biologically impossible. But I've heard some surgeons are working on it.

Ann Althouse said... Maybe, but if Macy's wants to open the women's dressing rooms to men who choose to think of themselves as women, it's not the place of a Macy's employee to hassle the customers and deprive them of the access Macy's has offered them.

What would your position be on the employment rights of the woman if she was in the habit of telling each woman who went toward the changing rooms, that the sign that says "women's changing rooms" really wasn't accurate?

In most stores I have bought clothes in, the dressing rooms were private cubicles, undifferentiated by sex.

It really depends on the store. Some have sturdy doors with locks, some have flimsy curtains that barely stay closed.

Men shouldn't be in women's restrooms or dressing rooms. This is getting ridiculous. Are the transgender lobby people actively trying to make women hate them? Cause it's totaly working on me. I'm sick of this crap.

First, as somebody who hangs a lot with conservative-skewing gun rights groups, it's always a bit shocking to see how indistinguishable the right wing's pearl-clutching horror at feeling unsafe around transgendered folks is from the left's pants-soiling fear of being in the same room as a person carrying a gun.

Second, is this really an issue of religious belief? I don't know the Bible inside and out, but in my four college courses on it, I don't recall where it says "And the LORD spoke, saying Lo, allow ye not the man who walks in the garb of woman to cross the threshold of the Macy's changing rook with the girl-silhouette on the door!"

Being a flaming priss about people whose sexual identity is more complicated than you'd prefer may be a feature of your religious group, but that doesn't make it a religious belief, per se.

I don't think most people are so worried about the men who identify as women, but that other people will take advantage of that sort of policy. I've seen people walking around the mall wearing a dress, but with man short hair and hairy legs. What's to stop creepy perverts from throwing on a dress and heading to the nearest dressing room or restroom?

I think a policy where the stores try to work with people, such as someone mentioned above looking out for them as customers to see that they have privacy, would be fine. And if a man has so successful converted that they can actually pass for a woman this isn't going to be an issue. But is someone walks in and is so obviously a man they don't belong in a ladies room.

I don't think most people are so worried about the men who identify as women, but that other people will take advantage of that sort of policy.

There are well more than enough comments here that say what you say, then mix in a despicable dose of "And if you have a penis you're a man and I won't be forced to entertain your delusion, freak" to make it clear that this discussion isn't motivated by a simple fear of men.

The concern is being badly overstated, in any case. Will a bio-women only policy stop these omnipresent male predators from sneaking into a women's room? If a "creepy pervert" leering around a women's room is actually biologically female, do we expect a store to do nothing about it?

Inflating the concern about that one hypothetical case where prior restraint on the "creepy pervert" might have prevented a crime in order to justify policies that humiliate and degrade thousands of transgendered Americans on a daily basis is not reasonable.

The horror scenario folks are imagining to justify their opposition is no different from the anti-gun obsessive who demands that "gun-free zone" signs stay up at a shopping mall because he has a right to feel safe from "gun violence".

The sign and policy doesn't deter determined criminals; the problem is with the criminal behavior, not with the people who look like the criminal; and it's not acceptable in a free society to make scapegoats of innocent people in order to make guilty people easier to confront.

But is someone walks in and is so obviously a man they don't belong in a ladies room.

Does a butch lesbian "belong in a ladies' room"?

If she looks like a man, is attracted to women, and is a member of a group that commits sex crimes at a rate similar to straight men*, doesn't she meet all the same concern-criteria of a man in this case?

Are we really comfortable limiting access to women's facilities based on how feminine we perceive a person's look to be?

[* - I'm not certain this is true. Dometic violence rates in lesbian families are similar to those in heterosexual families, but of course that isn't the axact same thing.]

Shanna -- Why do you and other people keep adding restroom? Restrooms are not at issue. There is nothing here about restrooms. What's to stop a creepy person from cutting off your head while you walk down the sidewalk?

Furthermore, unisex dressing rooms at stores are actually the norm. Aren't you aware of that? People change clothes in them all the time without any problem.

It may not be the issue in this particular case but it is part of the general agenda and we've seen lots of stories about it. It's not out of the blue to lump them in.

Furthermore, unisex dressing rooms at stores are actually the norm.

That has not been my experience. I do agree with you that most dressing rooms are probably fine, mostly because their are store personnel there so they aren't as secluded as a restroom. But I have been in some dressing rooms that had flimsy curtains, short walls, etc...those shouldn't be unisex.

Does a butch lesbian

Most 'butch' lesbian's still don't look anything like a man. Most 'feminine' gay men don't look anything like a woman. That's not at all what we're talking about here. And most gay or lesbian folks are not pretending to be a different sex.

I know at least two whom I'd be hard pressed to identify as biologically female if I didn't know them. They exist, they complicate the "doesn't look feminine enough" complaint enough to make it a serious issue, and waving them away by saying "most don't" is a distraction.

And most gay or lesbian folks are not pretending to be a different sex.

...Which wasn't supposed to be the point. But getting so hung up on the deception suggests that there's more to your opposition than "safety".

At Monsoon store, my husband was banned from accompanying me into the dressing room. I explained to the staff that I just had a c-section and had trouble getting dressed still and needed his help trying on clothes. They stated they had a 'no male' policy in their dressing room. Period. I did ask to speak to the manager, who agreed to it, even with my medical condition. I asked the sales staff if they would help me try on clothing, they all refused.

Should I have called the news stating I was discriminated against because I had a minor medical condition? Nope. I told them I won't be using their business again and walked out.

But on the comment about lesbians in the dressing room, many of my friends who worked retail said they had to kick many customers out of the store for using the dressing rooms as a place for making out and having sex in the changing stalls. Straight, gay, and lesbian alike. It happens, it just rarely gets reported in the media.

In small clothing stores, each dressing room is its own closet with mirrors, and a door opening to the public area. Those can be unisex because each built for one. In department stores dressing rooms exist in groups that share a secluded (ideally) gender-segregated area.

Among the few transgendered folks that I know personally, they are all quite mentally ill. Nobody will tell them that. But sadly they are.

And it comes down to more than wanting to whack your junk off.

The one I know the best - we were classmates in our masters program and worked together for 8 years as a team - is most definitely mentally ill to the point that he is a danger to himself, in my opinion.

This man has abandoned everything in pursuit of his sexual identity crisis. It's as though the pyramid of need has been turned upside down. 58 years of sober, rational life, this math teacher turned instructional designer prioritizes nail polish over a roof over his head. He sacrificed his house, his car, his family (including 5 children), every worldly possession for a life living in the streets of Los Angeles. He no longer has a porshe nor his video equipment nor a livelihood but he has some really cute size 13 shoes and some very long wigs. He dangerously provokes strangers who don't accept him as he sees himself and fantasizes that with enough feminine accoutrements he will indeed be female and all his problems will magically be resolved. He the rational math teacher is now a magical thinker.

The others I know are also very sad cases. I don't know them as well and haven't talked to them as intimately as I have my friend but I have listened to them lecture and chatted with them after. In all cases they are very unhappy people who have made great changes thinking that was the answer to their problem and after all the sacrifice and suffering they still are very unhappy. I suspect they never will be.

And newflash to homophobes and people who accuse others of homophobia, transgendered people aren't necessarily switching because their sexual orientation is different. A woman may become a man and still prefer men. It's more complicated that gay.

It's more akin to body dysmorphia. The undernourished 100 lb girl looks in the mirror and sees a fat slob. The transgendered looks in the mirror and thinks he ought to be seeing a woman.

We have normalized this behavior too much, in my opinion. It is a mental illness. At least for the people that aren't in it for attention seeking bullshit.